Proceedings Article | 16 April 2014
KEYWORDS: Signal processing, Electroencephalography, Signal detection, Receivers, Sensors, Amplifiers, Head, Linear filtering, Data communications, Global system for mobile communications
Detection of sleepiness and drowsiness in human beings has been a daunting task for both engineering and medical
technologies. Accuracy, precision and promptness of detection have always been an issue that has to be dealt by
technologists. Commonly, the rudimentary bio potential signals – ECG, EOG, EEG and EMG are used to classify
and discriminate sleep from being awake. However, the potential drawbacks may be high false detections, low
precision, obtrusiveness, aftermath analysis, etc. To overcome the disadvantages, this paper proposes the design of a
wireless and a real time monitoring system to track sleep and detect fatigue. This concept involves the use of EOG
and EEG to measure the blink rate and asses the person’s condition. In this user friendly and intuitive approach,
EOG and EEG signals are obtained by the dry gold wire nano-sensors fabricated on the inner side of a flexible
headband. The acquired signals are then electrically transmitted to the data processing and transmission unit, which
transmits the processed data to the receiver/monitoring module through WCDMA/GSM communication. This
module is equipped with a software program to process, feature extract, analyze, display and store the information.
Thereby, immediate detection of a person falling asleep is made feasible and, tracking the sleep cycle continuously
provides an insight about the experienced fatigue level. The novel approach of using a wireless, real time, dry
sensor on a flexible substrate reduces the obtrusiveness, and techniques adopted in the electronics and software
facilitates and substantial increase in efficiency, accuracy and precision.
